


The Petty Criminal's Guide To Love and Dating In Mumbai

by applegnat



Category: Kaminey (2009)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applegnat/pseuds/applegnat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five not-dates on which Charlie was taken, or more often, went along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Petty Criminal's Guide To Love and Dating In Mumbai

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to toujours_nigel for the prompt, which was 'five not-dates Charlie was taken on'. And thanks to bustedflush for a SpaG beta so terrific it weakened my knees. All mistakes are my own.

**The Petty Criminal's Guide To Love and Dating In Mumbai**   
_five not-dates on which Charlie was taken, or more often, went along_

 

~*~

**Dawn cruise around the Gateway of India**   
_and smuggling_

"You know," Charlie said. "This is like a scene out of that movie."

"Huh," said Mikhail, busy at the controls as the Hello How Are You made its way back towards the city with a consignment of some truly alarming-looking electronic spare parts. Charlie guessed they were going be put to good use in the workshops around Lamington Road that made and put fake stuff on the market faster than you can say 'Sony.' Charlie hoped that was all there was to it. The Hello How Are You was oozing its way down from the Gujarat coast, sailing all around Mumbai and coming up towards its southern tip. Charlie had not signed up for this sort of exciting 1970s black-marketeering lifestyle when he came to work for Mikhail's brothers. He definitely hadn't signed up for a week in an old fishing boat named the Hello How Are You bobbing up and down on the Arabian Sea, which was unbearably smelly and unremittingly brown apart from the odd times where the sun broke through the fug of the sky and the film of effluent over the water, which then struggled to achieve an approximation of green and thankfully fell well short of it, settling into a rainy and less sickly grey.

"What movie, bitch?" Mikhail said after a moment, moving away to coil up one end of a gigantic fishing net spread about the deck. Charlie entertained a moment's thought of Mikhail rolled up in it, like those sexy mermaid fantasies they sometimes had in old Tamil movies.

"The one where they smuggle the gold into Bombay, Vinod Khanna and Feroze Khan in their open shirts and bandanas, and all of a sudden this total item, who isn't wearing a blouse, rolls out of the nets and starts grooving."

"Man, yeah," Mikhail said. "That was way before our time."

"_This_ is way before our time," Charlie said. "I didn't know people still did business like – like _smugglers_."

"Yeah?" Mikhail said, amused. "You got a better idea?"

"I got tons, bitch," Charlie said. "But not for the salary you pay me."

"I don't pay you," Mikhail said. "My brothers do. And it's not a salary. It's a -"

"Pittance."

"Retainer. Damn, you can crib like a champion."

"It's like working in a government office," Charlie grumbled. Mikhail was familiar with the grumble. Charlie looked at the crates piled about his feet, tied down with coir and nylon rope, and thought he was far too close to the truth. Being a criminal _was_ like being a public servant most of the time. You worked in utterly shit conditions, you never broke through the ranks of the elite except through nepotism, and your livelihood essentially consisted of screwing over regular people. There was a bit less paperwork involved in crime, maybe. But that was it.

"Don't make me punch you," Mikhail said, tolerantly, and stretched and yawned like a skinny but content cat. They'd finally managed to tear each other's clothes off in the afternoon, starving and fierce after suffering through a week of enforced celibacy in the company of others. There _had_ been items in skimpy blouses at various points of time, but Charlie hadn't wanted them, because he didn't seem to want anyone who wasn't Mikhail these days, and Mikhail had taken one look at the girls and started complaining. He was horny, he said, not stupid. The fishermen had laughed at his snobbishness. Charlie sighed to himself. He'd looked a lot worse when Mikhail had first met him. The problem with sleeping with Mikhail was that you occasionally fell into situations where you compared yourself to fishermen's prostitutes. It didn't do wonders for your self-image.

The good thing about sleeping with Mikhail was that he was really a sport when you surprised him by jumping his bones in the fast-falling night, even once you had him tangled up in an old and rather fragrant fishing net. He simply stopped the motor and played along. He played along with everything, even after you had done with him and lay like deadweight on his skinny back, both of you twisting your heads to stare up at the night sky. This far out from the city, it wasn't dark at all; it was a light, light indigo, and it wasn't just angled, it was curved, like a bowl, and the stars were out in such force that if you had been less blissed-out and more like your usual self you would instantly have suspected that some production crew with crores to spend had done it up for the set of a Bollywood movie, because it was so beautiful that it couldn't be real.

They were dressed and at the controls when they came within sight of the city.

"Dada still cries every time he watches that movie," Mikhail said. "With No-Blouse and the gold biscuits."

"What movie?" Charlie said, distracted by the coastline ahead of him. The sky was changing from the right, skeins of pink and orange and purple streaked through the silvery grey of smog, weaving themselves gradually into the layers and layers of sky. Ahead of them, the Gateway of India was lightening to the colour of honey. From this distance it looked softer and smaller than it really was, just a serious, winking little eye in front of the Taj hotel.

"I think it makes him all sentimental about his start in the business," Mikhail added, oblivious. "He used to work for guys like that."

"Right," Charlie said. "That's why he's paying me '79's rates. Sentimentality."

They looked at each other, shirts unbuttoned, jeans hanging off their hips, and started to laugh. The sea breeze ruffled Mikhail's mop of curls, relaxed and jet-black after a week without access to hair product.

"I'll bring the biscuits if you lose the blouse," he told Charlie.

Charlie could hear the echoes of their whoops of laughter bouncing off the sea-wall as they came in.

 

 

**Early morning breakfast in the bylanes of Matunga**   
_and armed coercion_

Aakar Mehta, the Da Costas' financier, had resisted all attempts at negotiation so far. In fact, he had refused to so much as see them. It was a measure of their total incompetence in the face of rising competition, Charlie thought, that he and Mikhail were allowed to persist with the task. They had been trying to meet Aakar Mehta for the last ten days – a lifetime, this close to racing season – and neither subterfuge nor careful planning nor Charlie's favourite method, going up to his door and asking for an appointment with a smile and the knuckles of his right hand, had done them any good.

"Guns are for using also," Mujeeb told Shumon told Charlie and Mikhail, when news of their attempts got to him. "Where do they keep them, their – ?"

Mikhail had rolled his eyes, but they got the message. Threatening death was acceptable. They could deal with that. To be more accurate, Mikhail, who was absolutely nerveless around the things that mattered in the business, like horses and guns and women, dealt with it. Charlie looked stoic and hoped devoutly that his knuckles would develop some kind of amazing ability to deflect bullets the way Sunny Deol's knuckles did in Sunny Deol movies. It was a faint hope. They couldn't even deflect Mikhail when he tried to get into Charlie's pants at inopportune moments. Thankfully, Aakar Mehta would not be trying to get into Charlie's pants, Charlie thought. If he did, Charlie would mind a lot more than he minded Mikhail doing it.

They stepped out as soon as the 5:55 am Kanyakumari chugged past Charlie's carriage on the tracks. Long-distance trains entering Mumbai never whizzed, or raced, or did the things that regular, phallic-substitute trains were supposed to do. By the time they got in they were just too exhausted by the effort. They walked out to Mikhail's car, a beat-up old Hyundai Santro (he was being punished by Mujeeb and Shumon that month for wrecking his second BMW convertible in a year) that was parked in the lane behind the E.M.U. carshed.

("Is Mikhail with you?" Shumon had asked Charlie when they had gone over the general plan the night before, over the phone. "Yes, Dada," Charlie had replied, swallowing a moan. "Good," Shumon had growled. "Get him to do some real work for a change." "Yes, Dada," Charlie had answered fervently.)

"We're headed to his home?" Mikhail asked as he turned the keys.

They were surprising Aakar Mehta by hijacking his day's first meeting to try and encourage him to do a bit of good old double-crossing for Mujeeb and Shumon when the betting windows opened later in the month. In spite of what Mujeeb had said, this was essentially Mikhail's job. Charlie was there in his capacity as Intimidating Muscle. His powers of verbal persuasion, while astounding for a young man with a pronounced lisp and a temper as reliable as the Central Railways time-table, were not yet up to the task. Charlie was almost family within the Bengalis' circle of controllers, but 'almost' did not cut it with men like Aakar Mehta.

They turned in to Matunga as light began to break, heat-fuzzed and sleepy, over bylanes already buzzing with activity. The roads were wet where they ran past the gates of tens of brightly-lit South Indian temples, swept and wiped clean as carefully as the precincts within, smelling of flowers and damp dust and mustardseed oil. The garland market already had lines of older men queuing up to buy _varmalas_; fathers, Charlie realised, there to collect garlands and bouquets and hairpieces for their daughters' weddings. They spoke Tamil and Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam in the homes around here; after Baba's death Charlie had briefly lived with a friend's family on the edges of Dharavi, about ten minutes away from here, and they spoke them, too. The roads never smelled of incense or lamp-oil there, though; the loudspeakers never played whatever it was the old ladies inside the temples were chanting.

It was 6.30 am. Aakar Mehta's gate stood wide open and welcoming in the white light of morning, wet with dew and ritual washing. A minor cavalcade of small, family-car sort of cars stood parked around them, being washed by intimidatingly large men. They were bulletproof.

"Fuck," said Charlie. "Alright, let's get this over with, Mikhail."

"I'm hungry," Mikhail said. "I want idlis and coffee."

"In the heart of Mumbai's little Madras?" Charlie said, after he had taken a moment to deal with the non sequitur. "Imagine that."

"Let's go eat breakfast at Madras Cafe," Mikhail said, "and talk about this job a bit more."

"No."

"My treat."

"I don't like coffee," Charlie said. "Real men don't drink coffee."

"You're strange," Mikhail said. "You don't like booze either. Are you genetically indisposed to beverages?"

"I had a job once," Charlie said. "Then I lost it because my employer didn't let me work. I was so angry, I pounded his skin and bones together and fed them to slavering rabid dogs."

"I think I've seen that movie," Mikhail said. "Oh, were you talking about me?"

"No, sweetpea, of course I wasn't," Charlie said.

"I am not going out with that grumpy face," Mikhail said. "It gives me indigestion."

"You'll eat motherfucking breakfast," Charlie said. "In hell, before I let you go."

"This much is evident to one and all," Mikhail said. He yawned.

Charlie cursed.

He sulked all the way down Bhandarkar Road and around Matunga Circle. The scent of jasmine flowers mingled with the smells of coffee and masala dosa all down the road, with the occasional whiff of newsprint and musty old books whipped out by the textbook-sellers on the pavement, setting up shop for the day. Madras Cafe was an old, scrupulously wiped-down restaurant that served its coffee in bowls. Bowls. Like you ate dal from. It smelt acidly rich, and clean, like a different country altogether. It didn't wake you up like tea did, but it was strong. Mikhail drank three tumblers without stopping. Charlie watched in fascination. He ate an idli. Mikhail ate four. He ate another one, and drank another round of coffee.

By the time they had been there ten minutes, they were smiling at each other like kids snuggling together in autorickshaws did when they thought no one could see them.

"Excuse me, can we sit here?" Two little old ladies cheerfully disturbed their reverie. With the end of morning prayers and the first rush of wedding-day shopping, the Café had filled up around them.

"Of course," said Mikhail, now blatant in his theft of yet another idli off Charlie's plate. "In fact," he said, and got up graciously to go sit next to Charlie. "Why don't you take my seat?"

They played footsie until the end of breakfast in a manner utterly obscene and easily notable by passersby casting a glance at their table. The old ladies beamed at them in eminent approval of good behaviour as they chattered happily in Tamil to each other as they called for breakfast, and Mikhail drank more coffee. Charlie sucked his cheeks in.

"Brothers?" One of the ladies leaned in to ask him when Mikhail got up to go talk to the cashier about real estate prices in the area.

"No," Charlie said.

"Oh," she said. "Friends? College?"

"Shush, Thailambal," said her own friend, rolling her eyes. She leaned forward and smiled at Charlie. "Sorry, okay? I hope we didn't disturb you two."

"Friends, yes," Charlie said weakly. "But here on business, maami."

"Oho," said Thailambal maami. "South Indian?"

Charlie shook his head, tongue-tied, as he tended to be, in the presence of older and infinitely better-educated women.

"Not that it matters," Thailambal maami said. "In this city everybody eats everything. Especially idlis. So healthy."

"Even Bengalis," said Mikhail, slipping back into his seat. "Hain, shonamoni?"

"My own son-in-law, now," Thailambal maami said, and paused. "My daughter, you see. She married an accountant. A Gujarati. But very good fellow. So disciplined. Eats only South Indian food now." She said 'wonly.' Charlie was filled with the mad desire to laugh. "Ask Devaki," she said, turning to her friend. "Our Aakar, you know?"

"Oh," Charlie said.

"Yes," Mikhail said, after a beat. His eyes were bright. "We know."

The only moneylenders in Bombay who served you coffee were the South Indians, and they would never do business with anyone who didn't speak their language. Aakar Mehta was the exception to both rules. It went off well. Mikhail didn't once have to put his gun on the table. He was good at this, Charlie thought, trying to keep the smile off his face during the meeting. The intimidation worked fairly well, too. Aakar Mehta wasn't fazed by Charlie's size, not exactly, but Charlie had presence. He added weight to Mikhail's persuasion. He was on the job. It was satisfying.

"You must eat breakfast," Aakar Mehta said at the end of the discussion. No, they said, they had eaten and come. Aakar Mehta did not gaze at the clock, which said 7.40 am. He looked at Charlie and his muscles instead. Charlie smiled his best menacing smile and felt safe doing so, since people had stopped laughing at it a while ago and started to look dubious about it instead.

They said goodbye to Thailambal maami before they left, and promised to come back for lunch.

 

 

**Cricket at the Oval**   
_and illegal eviction_

If there was one thing Charlie fucking hated, it was evictions. It was all very well to say that you would rather be evicted in Bombay than anywhere else, because there would always be place for you under some bridge or bus stop or bench, somewhere the police would kick you and walk away because they knew you were too poor to pay them. It didn't make it alright. He knew what it was like, both from before Baba died and after. He hadn't signed up to throw people, even real shitty arseholes of people, out on the street – or out off the street to some other street, as was more often the case.

He kept trying to explain this to the superiors in the organisation. Unfortunately, the only person who ever listened to him was Mikhail. Unfortunately, operating a criminal outfit meant that goodwill was currency, and even if you didn't have real estate trouble yourself, there was always going to be a friend, or an ex-enemy, or the enemy of an enemy, who needed a favour and didn't have enough muscle to tide him over. Unfortunately, working in a criminal outfit meant that you did what you were told if you valued your career, and also your limbs.

In the underworld, grassroots-level change usually implied hiring a lawnmower.

It did nothing to stem his sense of outrage when they were asked to scare off a kids' club that played cricket on the Oval, though.

"But," he said, stupefied. "How is that even possible?"

The Oval Maidan was a heritage park. It belonged to the municipal corporation. At any given point in its history there had been at least nine games of cricket going on side by side within its confines. On sunny days it was twelve. Charlie was pretty sure Sunil Gavaskar had gotten his start there.

"I'm pretty sure that was Shivaji Park," Mikhail said. It was pretty rotten when Mikhail didn't get the point.

"The ex-Chief Minister's son-in-law wants to start a cricket academy there," Mujeeb said. Charlie had been around for long enough now that Mujeeb addressed him directly instead of through Shumon or Mikhail. He still spoke in Bengali, though, which Charlie didn't understand unless he was being given orders, or in bed with Mikhail. (The two occasions elided all the time. Mikhail was your standard pushy bottom.) "These punks have been giving his students grief at the nets. He wants an informal warning issued to them to clear off the ground and stay cleared off. That's it. You won't have to kill anyone." He paused. "See that you don't kill anyone."

"Let me get this straight," Charlie said. "You want us to get rid of a bunch of little boys who go to the Oval to play cricket freely and uninhinbitedly, as they have done for generations, so that some cuntface can set up a completely illegal academy that charges a fee to coach on public property?"

Mujeeb's jaw worked for a moment as he tried to spot the flaw in Charlie's assessment.

"Boss, whenever you want me to do this, I have a prior appointment," Charlie said. "My grandmother hasn't had a funeral in years."

"Alright then, don't do it," Mujeeb said.

"I," Charlie said. "Wait, really?"

"No," Mujeeb said. "They want it done by next Sunday. Finish the job before lunch."

Being the lawnmower was a depressing prospect.

"But Dada asked us to," Mikhail said, in private. "What do you care? Punks will be punks. They'll always find a gully and a pitch. You think fellows like Munaf Patel played on grass?"

"Munaf Patel is not going to last a year in the team," Charlie said. "I'll bet you my life savings."

On Sunday morning, the air over the Oval was buzzing. It was a large ground. The ex-CM's son-in-law wanted just a quarter of it – for now. Eventually, he was going to run at least four games simultaneously, two on each side of the walkway in the centre, in his coaching schedules. It was unambitious, Charlie thought, considering that there were about twelve games happening right now that he could count. Even if some of them were five a side, it was still a lot of people. Maybe some of them would come forward to the assistance of the First Innings Cricket Association. They would really have to wade in both fists up, then.

"Alright," said Mikhail. "Execute. You're the boss."

"You always know just what to say," Charlie muttered.

They stood there a little while, watching the games go on around them. The First Innings Cricket Association were playing seven-a-side. They weren't _much_ younger than Charlie and Mikhail and the fellows who'd rolled out of bed to act as back-up. Too old to be wasting Sunday mornings playing like their lives depended on it, anyway. There were probably a whole host of pissed off mothers and girlfriends waiting for them to troop back home and excuse themselves from weekend work, Charlie supposed. He had friends who had mothers and girlfriends.

It wasn't that he _cared_-cared. No roofs were being exploded over people's heads. No grandmothers were being committed to their funerals (Charlie didn't honestly know if he had any left alive; he'd never met them). It was just a bunch of kids who were going to have to go find someplace else to play. It was how Charlie and Guddu had played cricket for pretty much the entirety of their childhoods –the entirety until Guddu started worrying that it was taking away from his books. Kicked out of school after hours, kicked off the footpaths by anxious watchmen, kicked off from between the railway tracks by the cleaners. Baba never minded their playing inside the house, since he said there was nothing there for them to break anyway. They lived in a room that just about made it to twenty-two yards with some imagination.

It was okay. Charlie was never going to play for India. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of the kids who stomped all around the Oval every free minute they got weren't going to make it either. That was what coaching academies were for, anyway.

"Ouf," said Mikhail behind him, in the middle of that oppressive sunshine, ankle-deep in grass and red dust. "What a straight drive."

Charlie craned his neck automatically, to track ball as it flew above their heads in that beautiful, impossible curve. The sun got in his eyes, briefly distorting the shot's trajectory. He blinked. The ball hit the ground at one bounce and leaped towards him, on the edge of the invisible boundary. In the middle distance, Mikhail shimmered. He was wearing an obscenely shiny blue shirt, which helped. "CATCH IT!" everyone yelled at him. The fielder racing in from deep mid-off was an impossible distance away. "THROW IT!"

Charlie dived parallel to the ground, caught, and threw. It flew straight to the keeper, who aimed it at the wicket as if his hands were Charlie's hands. It was magnificent.

The pitch erupted in a series of whistles and cheers. Mid-off and first slip were jogging up to him, arms raised spontaneously in victory.

"Sharp fielding, oi, sharp fielding!" the wicket-keeper bellowed.

"Uhm, guys," the batsman said. "He's not actually _on_ the team."

Charlie looked at Mikhail. The fight was on now. They could have a bust-up on their hands in a matter of seconds. It would be the stuff of movies. It would be bloody and shameless. It would be Charlie against a team of shrimps he could eat alive before they could squeak.

Mikhail looked at Charlie.

"That's a pity, motherfuckers," he said. "Because you should see his yorker."

Someone said, "Who're you calling a motherfucker, motherfucker?" Someone else said, "Show us if you have the balls, motherfucker."

Mikhail shrugged and grinned. "Screw this shit, man," he told Charlie. "I'm in the mood for a game."

He flipped the lid of his obnoxious phone open.

"Not now, Mikhail," Charlie began. Someone pressed a cricket ball into his hand.

"Dada," Mikhail said. "Situation on ground unviable."

"Mikhail," Charlie repeated, rubbing the ball on his jeans to get its shine off.

"No, I just can't be bothered. Charlie's right, this is stupid. So call someone else and ask them to deck the fellow one. Yeah. Yeah. No, you know Charlie's rubbish at this whole business anyway."

_"Asshole,"_ Charlie said, fervently.

"Save some of the single-malt for dinner, okay? Later, then." He flipped the phone shut and grinned at Charlie.

"I hate being grassroots," Charlie said, as they walked together to the top of his run-up.

"You know the right people," Mikhail said. "That's not grassroots. Maybe like weeds or something. Creepers."

"Are you on my team?" Charlie asked. "Because if you're not I'm still up for beating the hell out of your face."

Charlie guessed all the mothers and girlfriends were probably done waiting by the time the game ended. Nobody even talked of breaking it up until it was hopelessly dark, and until they'd got the hang of how to play Charlie on the front foot. Mikhail, who had more experience with Charlie's bowling than anyone in the world not named Guddu, got interesting to the other boys when he came on to bat and scored fifteen in his first over. Charlie was out of practice, but he warmed up quickly. And there were a couple of kids over there who were talking of making it to the Ranji Trophy, and the batsman he'd helped run out was actually the captain of the U-19s at the Cricket Club of India.

They flopped down on the grass and stretched out after the others went away, as the moon rose and the Sunday traffic on the roads outside the fences dropped to the odd bus and the escaped jalopies from Cusrow Baug.

"I think you're wrong," Mikhail said, dreamily. "Munaf's going to come good once he gets his injuries sorted out. He'll do well in England."

"Do you think anyone can see us?" Charlie said urgently, and rolled over to Mikhail's side.

There were no floodlights at the Oval because the citizens' committees thought it was a colossal amount of electricity to waste on amateur games. You couldn't see six feet in front of you if you were caught there in the dark. It was helpful as they mauled each other and tried to contain their laughter. They swallowed each other's gasps, like the couples around them were doing, and lay there tangling fiercely, intensely, feeling awkward and helpless and completely unable to stop what they'd started – which was pretty much Charlie's entire life if he'd had a spare minute to think about something other than Mikhail, and Mikhail's tongue, and Mikhail's hands, and this, here and now, daring chance to do something about it.

"Shameless," he said after a while, smiling from ear to ear. He just about made out the gleam of Mikhail's earring, and his frosted tips.

"You started it."

"You blew off an entire day's worth of work to play cricket," Charlie said.

"It was a lame day of work," Mikhail said, and yawned against Charlie's jaw. "What do you care? Ex-Chief Ministers will be ex-Chief Ministers. They can find somewhere else to play."

"Long as they leave me out of it," Charlie said. "Us."

"So we'll go to the _current_ Chief Minister," Mikhail said. "I'm pretty sure one of Shumon-da's lawyers knows him. Simple."

"Lawnmower," Charlie said.

"Huh?" Mikhail said.

"Nothing," Charlie said, and grinned again. "Nothing."

 

**A stroll down Bandstand**   
_and outright theft_

"You know, Mikhail," Charlie said, through gritted teeth and huffed breath, darting through the crowds populating the promenade, "when you said 'a stroll down by the sea,' _this_" – he looked over his shoulder at the Da Costas' goons from whom they'd pinched the cash now lumped on their back in sacks – "was not what I had in mind."

"Wanted – be – funny," Mikhail wheezed. "You love it."

Charlie accelerated as the shouts grew closer. As they reached the end of the promenade, he broke sharply for his left and flung the bags over.

"Car," Mikhail panted. "Wish – thought – damn."

"I hate you," Charlie said, and took his hand and pulled him through the crowds, onto the parapet, running back until Maxwell Da Costa almost had his hands on Charlie's shirt, and then burst forward, his fingers circled tight around Mikhail's wrist, into the sunset, down to the waiting boat twelve feet below.

 

 

**...and dinner at Wasabi**   
_with a side of identity fraud_

 

"Come out to dinner? My treat," Sofia said, when she called him early in the morning. He'd spent the night at Wadi Bunder, going over the inventory from the couple of businesses he'd shut down or sold off after he took over. He'd been wrong all those years ago: crime was _all_ about paperwork, only you carried it around in your head and wrote its details into credit ledgers and bank accounts and sometimes on bullets, instead of stamp paper. Sofia had just returned from a week in Rajasthan with a little group of Israeli hippies. Ostensibly she had gone along as a guide and translator. When Charlie had called her yesterday she had told him she was hitchhiking it back in a transport lorry carrying sheet metals. Clearly, she hadn't been stopped at the inter-state checkpoints for whatever it was that came in on the truck aside from the sheet metal. The trip had been a success. Charlie had come to realise that most things about Sofia tended to be.

He smiled a little to himself as he pulled up outside the Taj and had his car and person scrutinised minutely through about three million safety checks. He didn't mind not carrying a gun to dinner, and all the maximum-security was a little reassuring. You knew that no other fucker was carrying his, either. Or hers, he corrected himself. His smile widened at the sight of Sofia waiting in the lobby, prettily and carefully dressed in a sari of a pink so hot and a texture so opulent that your tear ducts exploded with desire upon visual contact. She carried it off like a movie star. Children and young women walking past her stared, open-mouthed. Men just stopped walking.

"Whole_sale_," he murmured admiringly as he came up to her and took her hand.

"No, Manish Malhotra," she said, grin turning slightly puzzled. She looked down at herself. "It's alright, isn't it?"

"I don't know about alright," he said. "More like dazzling. You look like a million bucks. Totally jagmag."

"Oh, good," she said. Her smile increased in wattage again. "I wanted to feel rich tonight."

The Taj was always quiet, even by swanky-hotel standards. Charlie had mistrusted it when he first came here; he felt like it was the sheer, immovable force of the building, stifling every sort of boisterousness into something acceptable, whether it was middle-aged aunts-of-the-bride rolling into a wedding drunk off their heads, or teenagers peeling money over DJs and bartenders in the nightclubs. Tonight it was quieter than ever, somehow. He strolled in to the Japanese restaurant hand-in-hand with Sofia, and paused at the entrance. "It's changed," he said, just as she exclaimed, and they looked at each other, suddenly discomfited.

"Welcome back, sir," the manager coming up to them said matter-of-factly, as if restaurants burned down in terrorist attacks and re-opened themselves every day around here; all grave politeness, as if he hadn't last seen Charlie in his tattered sneakers and export surplus tee-shirts. Charlie was suddenly glad, and then slightly irritated that he happened to have his most sober jacket on. "And madam."

Charlie wanted to ask her when she had come here, but he thought he knew, the way she knew that it had been Mikhail – Mikhail with whom he'd reeled in, many times, during and after and sometimes before the all-night revels. Little Mikhail and little Charlie with the wind at their back. They made you feel rich here, even if you came in with just enough money to sit around their unlimited-refill pot of coffee at three in the morning. It seemed like years and years ago, even though they were both here – both alive – early last November, at least. Sofia had her own history of hotels and coffeeshops, and being dirt-poor. He couldn't ask her.

Dinner was elaborate and long-winded, very different from the meals Charlie had dreamed of as a child. At swanky restaurants they didn't feed you until steam came out of your ears and your stomach burst. It was a luxury wholly different from a chicken biryani at the lunch home outside Mumbai Central station; the point here was to make everything that was missing from the meal seem superfluous. They ate their way through two hours of puzzling, marvellous Japanese food, and Sofia drank half a bottle of wine didn't make her tipsy in the least, at least that Charlie could notice. They were done with their last round of tea (it was the only bit of the meal Charlie didn't much like – foreign food was all well and good, but the world at large, he had come to realise, made appalling tea) when Sofia put something on the middle of the table, exhaled, and said, "I got you something."

Charlie looked down at it. It was a little book with a blue leather cover and a REPUBLIC OF INDIA stamp on it. He opened it. It had his picture and name and signature inside it. He looked at it for a long time.

"The photographs were easy," she said. Her voice was not entirely self-assured. "Of course, since you had to hand them over to the housing society. And the signatures were okay, Charlie. I got a little help with documentation from my guys – and from your accountants. It's all digitised these days."

"And the police verification?" he said, finally.

"I handled it," she said, just like that. "It isn't a fake, Charlie. It just – starts with a clean slate." She looked grave and intent, but the movie-star smile, tentative now, was quite real. "We deserve that, no?"

He looked down at the passport again. It had his name, CHARLIE VIJAY SHARMA, and the address to his – their – new home. It had Sofia's name on the line marked 'Spouse'. Most of the stuff they asked you on this page hadn't even been fantasy a couple of years ago. It was utterly meaningless. At the bottom of the front page was his birthdate. And then it struck him. His brother. That was how she got the details of the other life, his former life, filled out.

"Happy birthday, Charlie," she said, and he smiled back.

Outside, the air was muggy, and a bright golden-yellow from the lights around the Gateway. The heritage workers had finally finished whatever they'd found to do it, and it stood there, a stone's throw away from the gates of the hotel, stripped of scaffolding and sackcloth. They were full of shit, Charlie thought. It looked exactly the same as it had before the restoration work.

"So where will you go first?" she asked him.

"I don't know," he said. He'd thought about it. "You tell me. You've lived in half the world's countries."

"I don't know, Charlie," she said. "I didn't really go anywhere on vacation. Paris was nice, I guess. It was good weather. So was Capri. New York. You could go without me, you know."

"Nah," said Charlie. "You want to go back home?"

"...this is my home?" she said. She looked oddly at him.

"I meant back to the apartment," he said, and poked her gently as she laughed at herself.

She said yes, alright, but it was a pleasant evening. They flagged down a passing tea-seller and bought four cups and sat there talking about where they wanted to go next. Sofia told him about England and Greece, about all the places she'd been to, as a teenager worse off than he'd ever been, before she had come to India, and they had met and stumbled along to this point in time, after everything, everything that had happened. They sat there until the last tourists straggled out of the square, leaving the natives behind: the pimps and the pushers, the lonely and the drunk, the homeless and the mad, and everywhere, lovers and friends in twos and threes, wandering lost and happy in a world of their own. Murmuring voices rolled over to where they sat, muted under the roar of the waves.

This is where the person you were waiting for would show up at a crucial moment of the story, Charlie thought, if you were in a movie. Those who were cruelly parted went meandering through the city, navigating the black drifts of bitterness that streaked through its atmosphere like smog, until they found themselves here, within forgiving distance of each other. This is where someone you thought was dead all along showed up to sit beside you and chivvy you out of the endless bleakness of grief – a grief you had no breath to even acknowledge if you sat facing the other way, instead of this vast, disgusting expanse of water. It smelled vaguely of salt and dead flowers. Dead men didn't grow up. Mikhail would probably have said something encouraging about Sofia's breasts. He might have said SPAIN! FRANCE! MIAMI! in enthusiasm, in celebration. Comforting wisdom had never been his strong point. Once, as they had sat here, he had gotten into a fight with Charlie and tried to push him into the water.

And yet it was easy to let yourself be fooled by the sea breeze, riffling warm and damp through your hair, almost human. To try and make something of the heavy air and the fuzz of neon light pressing against your eyelids. It was stupidly easy.

He said, "Let's start in Spain."

"Alright," Sofia said. "I've always wanted to see Barcelona. When do you want to go?"

In a bit," Charlie said. "In a bit."

 

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The movie Charlie's talking about in the first part is _Dayavan_, the popular 1989 Vinod Khanna-Feroze Khan-Madhuri Dixit Hindi movie based on the story of real-life '70s don Varadarajan Mudaliar. However the movie Mikhail is referring to is _Nayakan_, the cult gangster biopic about Vardha, made earlier in the decade by Mani Ratnam – in both Tamil and Hindi versions – starring Kamalhaasan, of which _Dayavan_ was a frame-by-frame remake. _Dayavan_ was entertaining fluff, but _Nayakan_ is a classic, and feeds in so well into the collapsed barriers between history and legend in Mumbai's ganglands that it actually found a mention in Vikram Chandra's _Sacred Games_, in which a gangster sends flowers to Mani Ratnam after he watches _Nayakan_. You can watch the song from _Dayavan_ [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExmDb8-4Epo).   
> 2\. Item (slang, Hindi/English) – a total bombshell of a woman. Disrespectful.  
> 3\. Crore (Hindi, pan-Indian usage) – the equivalent of ten million.  
> 4\. _varmalas_ (Hindi, sing. _varmala_) - floral garlands, spec. bridal.  
> 5\. Chanting inside the temples - the [Suprabhatam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprabhatam), or the gods' personal wake-up call. You seriously hear this all around Matunga and Kings' Circle if you go early enough in the morning. [Audio file [here](http://www.sendspace.com/file/fwvlrp).]  
> 6\. Idlis - [idlis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idli).  
> 7\. Dosa - [dosa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosa), [masala dosa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosa#Masala_dosa).  
> 8\. Madras Cafe - culinary institution among Mumbaikars such that even South Indians approve of their South Indian food. You have to go REALLY EARLY if you don't want to wait for a table.   
> 9\. _maami_ (sev. Indian languages incl. Tamil) – aunt. Used as a generic term of respect for elderly women in Tamil.   
> 10\. _Hain, shonamoni?_ (Bengali) – Yes, [term of endearment generally used by parents speaking to their tiny daughters]?  
> 11\. The Oval – [Oval Maidan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oval_Maidan).  
> 12\. Sunil Gavaskar – Sachin Tendulkar before Sachin Tendulkar was Sachin Tendulkar. My father's generation would beat me over the head with bails were they to hear me say it. But I said it so there.  
> 13\. Shivaji Park – iconic Mumbai sports ground/garden [the Municipal Corporation is always hazy about the difference between the two] in Central Mumbai, the real breeding ground of Mumbai talent; the Oval is more about amateur sportsmanship and impromptu games. [PS. There is in fact a famous ex-cricketer who runs an academy on the grounds. For various reasons, no actual evictions have ever taken place.]  
> 14\. Straight drive – when the batsman plays the ball at a 90-degree angle to his wicket, back past the bowler. Sachin Tendulkar's straight drives travel down the ground like fucking rockets.  
> 15\. Yorker – a fast delivery that pitches very close to the batsman's body, forcing him on the back foot if he's fast enough to get his toes out of the way. Wikipedia has [extensive notes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorker).  
> 16\. Ranji Trophy – the most prestigious league in the domestic season. You can't make it to the national team unless you've played Ranji. But as hard as it is to get into Ranji, the gap between it and the national team is a yawning chasm. It's pretty much like footie in that sense - but international cricket has smaller squads and, unlike in football, heavily overlapping domestic and international seasons.   
> 17\. Bandstand – the stretch of sea-facing promenade between Bandra Fort and ... I can't remember, sry guys. But it's a stretch.   
> 18\. Wasabi – iconic Japanese restaurant in the Taj Mahal hotel. Destroyed in the terror attacks in 2008, it currently operates out of a different floor of the hotel, but is being restored as we speak.  
> 19\. I'm thinking of the sort of sari [Shilpa Shetty wore to her engagement](http://mimg.sulekha.com/shilpa-shetty/Events/shilpa-shetty-engagement/shilpa-shetty-engagement87.JPG). Guys, it's so. Bollywood. It's the sari equivalent of a monogrammed Louis Vuitton bag.   
> 20\. Wholesale (slang, English-origin, maybe spec. to Mumbai) – Fulsome, complete.  
> 21\. _jagmag_ (Hindi, slang) – bling, A+.
> 
>  
> 
> In case you are wondering why the dates keep coming back to the sea, I can only remind you that Bombay is among the top ten least romantic cities in the world, and the sea is pretty much our only refuge. I mean, sure, there are all those great restaurants and the forest right in the middle of the western suburbs and rickshaw drivers who won't turn a hair if you snog in the back seat at traffic signals, bless them, but that apart, not great. As Faiz said, there are comforts in the world other than love.
> 
> Thanks again to bustedflush for her awesome beta, and to 22by7 for reading the last bit.


End file.
